We need a new means of account verification.

Apr 17, 2020 at 3:00 PM
War criminal
"Life begins and ends with Nu."
Join Date: Jun 27, 2013
Location: Phoenix
Posts: 2758
Age: 29
This is the second time this year that this has been going on, where the email verification prompts are popping up, and no actual emails are being sent. And this has been going on for even longer this time, considering the last new member that made an account in the forums.
9l1ju9.png

Now, I completely understand why we have this setup, and that is protection from the spambots. And as much as it would be nice to have that whole verification process removed entirely, that'd only make dealing with them an even bigger pain. But this has been so easily been bypassed by the bots themselves, that it's going to have to be better to go for a more secure means of account verification, as well as making it not be required to be done every month on every device you log into the forums on. Personally, I wouldn't mind a Captcha system, or something more immediate like the Human Verification process being used in Romhacking.net.
p372948-1-q3hziu.png


Any opinions on this? Maybe there's a better alternative than the ones I've suggested or maybe something already in the works?
 
Apr 17, 2020 at 10:02 PM
Soup Man
"In Soviet Russia, graves keep YOU!"
Join Date: Jul 15, 2014
Location: IN YOUR HEAD, SHIT FOR BRAINS
Posts: 670
Age: 7
the forums are dead
 
Apr 17, 2020 at 11:30 PM
War criminal
"Life begins and ends with Nu."
Join Date: Jun 27, 2013
Location: Phoenix
Posts: 2758
Age: 29
the forums are dead
Mayhaps you can go and suggest something to have the be place alive then, since you're so concerned about its demise.
 
Apr 18, 2020 at 9:11 AM
Senior Member
"Wahoo! Upgrade!"
Join Date: Dec 22, 2018
Location: Sand Zone Residence
Posts: 55
Perhaps using a transactional email API such as Mailgun would ensure email delivery. Sure, it's a paid service ($0.80/1000 emails/mo), but it's not that much IMO and it does provide fast SMTP delivery.
 
Apr 18, 2020 at 12:32 PM
Senior Member
"This is the greatest handgun ever made! You have to ask yourself, do I feel lucky?"
Join Date: Sep 23, 2019
Location:
Posts: 97
Perhaps using a transactional email API such as Mailgun would ensure email delivery. Sure, it's a paid service ($0.80/1000 emails/mo), but it's not that much IMO and it does provide fast SMTP delivery.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't making a paid email service mandatory reduce the amount of people willing to join here?
 
Apr 18, 2020 at 1:24 PM
Senior Member
"Huzzah!"
Join Date: Jul 6, 2019
Location: United States
Posts: 213
I agree with this, we do need to upgrade or use a different way to verify accounts, and while I don't actually have a problem with this (since I don't remember ever verifying my account in the first place) I agree with your suggestion with ROMhacking.net's way of human verification.
 
Apr 18, 2020 at 5:10 PM
Soup Man
"In Soviet Russia, graves keep YOU!"
Join Date: Jul 15, 2014
Location: IN YOUR HEAD, SHIT FOR BRAINS
Posts: 670
Age: 7
Mayhaps you can go and suggest something to have the be place alive then, since you're so concerned about its demise.
im not
 

Attachments

  • get over it.png
    get over it.png
    7.9 KB · Views: 2
Apr 18, 2020 at 11:01 PM
War criminal
"Life begins and ends with Nu."
Join Date: Jun 27, 2013
Location: Phoenix
Posts: 2758
Age: 29
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't making a paid email service mandatory reduce the amount of people willing to join here?
It would have to be Andwhy paying for the service, if that's what Joe really meant.
 
Apr 19, 2020 at 2:17 AM
Junior Member
"Wow! The more I drink of this magical beverage, the more games I can play! Wheee!"
Join Date: Apr 17, 2017
Location:
Posts: 28
The forums are dead...
 
Apr 19, 2020 at 2:24 AM
Senior Member
"Wahoo! Upgrade!"
Join Date: Dec 22, 2018
Location: Sand Zone Residence
Posts: 55
Apr 19, 2020 at 11:27 AM
Senior Member
"This is the greatest handgun ever made! You have to ask yourself, do I feel lucky?"
Join Date: Sep 23, 2019
Location:
Posts: 97
It would have to be Andwhy paying for the service, if that's what Joe really meant.
So the individual users don't have pay for this service, but Andywhy does? On one hand, it assuages any worries I had about reducing new member counts and potential elitism. On the other, if it costs $0.80/1000 emails for each member, and there are about 100+ members (not counting spambots/sockpuppets), then how much is that going to cost? And it probably costs money for the admins to keep this site afloat (unless it's one of those free forums sites).
 
Apr 20, 2020 at 1:49 AM
Senior Member
"Wahoo! Upgrade!"
Join Date: Dec 22, 2018
Location: Sand Zone Residence
Posts: 55
$0.80/1000 emails for each member
dunno where you got the "for each member" part from. it's overall $0.80/1000 emails, so if 1000 people sign up in a month, andwhy would have to pay $0.80. (I'm not counting the notification emails, which I think should be disabled by default).

But again, you get more emails for the first three months (for free), so andwhy can always experiment and see how many emails are sent out per month and if it would be worth it cost-wise.
 
Apr 20, 2020 at 9:45 AM
Senior Member
"This is the greatest handgun ever made! You have to ask yourself, do I feel lucky?"
Join Date: Sep 23, 2019
Location:
Posts: 97
dunno where you got the "for each member" part from. it's overall $0.80/1000 emails, so if 1000 people sign up in a month, andwhy would have to pay $0.80. (I'm not counting the notification emails, which I think should be disabled by default).

But again, you get more emails for the first three months (for free), so andwhy can always experiment and see how many emails are sent out per month and if it would be worth it cost-wise.
Ah, I had assumed that the $0.80 was on an individual basis rather than a general one. If that amount is on a general basis, then I'm sure that for Whyis, it would probably be worth the cost in the long run.
 
Jun 9, 2021 at 5:39 AM
Administrator
Forum Administrator
"Life begins and ends with Nu."
Join Date: Jul 15, 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 6211
Age: 38
Honestly... I'm starting to consider this. My entire hosting provider (digitalocean) is being blocked by the UCEPROTECTL3 blacklist, which is a blacklist that microsoft email services use. So any emails to @live.com, @hotmail.com or @outlook.com are just bouncing.

UCEPROTECT are shady as fuck. Most email blacklists block individual ip addresses, but UCEPROTECTL2 blocks entire ip ranges, and UCEPROTECTL3 blocks entire hosting providers, in full expectation that it will catch legitimate users in the crossfire, all so that they can people power hosting providers. And to be whitelisted on either you are expected to pay a monthly fee. It's the email blacklist version of the mafia.
 
Last edited:
Jun 10, 2021 at 2:00 AM
Based Member
"Life begins and ends with Nu."
Join Date: Dec 31, 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 2307
Age: 27
Oh dear, well that's not good if legitimate users are being hindered from registering on that kind of scale. When did the UCEPROTECTL3 come into effect like this and start blacklisting digitalocean?

Do you have a planned solution in mind? Like changing the verification process, changing the hosting provider, or something else?
 
Jun 11, 2021 at 2:44 AM
Administrator
Forum Administrator
"Life begins and ends with Nu."
Join Date: Jul 15, 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 6211
Age: 38
When did the UCEPROTECTL3 come into effect like this and start blacklisting digitalocean?
It's not that UCEPROTECTL3 is new, it's just that spam abusers on Digitalocean ip addresses have reached a high enough level for Digitalocean to be blocked, and Digitalocean seem to have a "do nothing" policy around spam abuse.

Do you have a planned solution in mind? Like changing the verification process, changing the hosting provider, or something else?
I'll be changing the hosting provider for the forums to Vultr. It sucks that I only just completed a migration and now have to do all over again. The good news is that I only have to move the forums, everything else can stay on Digitalocean.
 
Last edited:
Jun 11, 2021 at 10:47 AM
Senior Member
Modding Community Discord Moderator
CSE Discord Moderator
"I, Ikachan. The Life and Documentary of the OrigiNAL SQuiD."
Join Date: Jan 14, 2014
Location: Antarctica (The Penguins say Hi)
Posts: 150
Age: 24
The good news is that I only have to move the forums, everything else can stay on Digitalocean.
Does that mean it'd be possible for the forums to go down, but not the main site?
 
Top